An influential Republican senator from 1881 until 1911, Nelson W. Aldrich
(1841–1915) used his position on the Senate Finance
Committee—which he chaired from 1899 to 1911—to maintain
protection. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1878, Aldrich
was selected in October 1881 to fill the Rhode Island seat vacated by the
death of Senator Ambrose Burnside. As a member of the Finance Committee,
Aldrich apprenticed under Justin Morrill of Vermont, who chaired the
committee for twenty-two years, until 1898. An ardent defender of both the
American System and Congress's authority over trade policy, Morrill
opposed free trade, reciprocal trade agreements, and unconditional MFN
treatment. When he assumed the chair of the Finance Committee, Aldrich
remained steadfast to Morrill's views on trade.

Aldrich championed the position held by the Republican Party that economic
nationalism promoted class harmony. By excluding competition from imports,
so the argument went, a high tariff wall would promote the well-being not
only of producers and workers but also of consumers. As Aldrich put it in
the
Congressional Record
of 5 August 1909: "If we permit American industries to live by the
imposition of protective duties, competition in this country will so
affect prices that it will give the American consumer the best possible
results." For Aldrich, the tariff was the price that overseas
producers had to pay to enter the U.S. market. As such, protectionism
placed the burden of generating revenue for the federal government on
foreign producers and domestic consumers of imported
"luxury" items.

Aldrich had a major hand in writing the McKinley (1890) and Dingley (1897)
Acts, which allowed the executive branch to negotiate reciprocal trade
treaties. However, he opposed the deals that administrations subsequently
negotiated because they lacked equivalent exchanges of concessions. Wedded
to the congressional committee system as the institutional basis for
policy-making, Aldrich also fought the creation of a commission of experts
to study the tariff "scientifically" and make policy
recommendations. Committed to protecting the textile industries of his
state, Aldrich obstructed the modest efforts of the Taft administration to
reduce tariffs and sought to make what became the 1909 Payne-Aldrich Act
as conservative a piece of trade legislation as possible.